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Satyamev Jayate Episode Review: Who is guilty- a rapist or a rape-victim?

**** Stories included in this blog are disturbing*******

The first episode of Aamir Khan’s Satyamev Jayate enlightened us about a rape victim’s journey. Rape is rampant in India. It is said that a rape takes place every 20 minutes in India. Incidences of rapists putting acid into victim’s eyes, tearing a girl’s body into two and cutting a girl’s tongue so she could not complain were reported in the beginning of the show. However, the show was not about the barbarity of rape cases, it was about the kind of ordeals that a rape victim endures after being raped. Take a look at this number. In year 2012, there were 1,01,041 reported rape cases, and only in 3,563 cases, rapists were convicted (less than 4%). This data clearly shows that a rapist can get away easily in India. And we, as a society allow that to happen. That is what the show was about.

Let us start with police. Time and again we have heard about police indifference towards victims. They try their best to dissuade victims from complaining. When a rape victim goes to a police station, many times, police declines to register a complaint- forget about arresting the culprits. Take this story that was highlighted in the show. A girl was kidnapped and gang-raped. She, along with her parents, went to the police station. Police declined to arrest influential rapists. They threatened the girl to withdraw her complaint, which she declined. Thus, rapists kidnapped her again and raped her. Second time also police did not arrest those rapists. The girl did not retract her FIR, and thus, those rapists came to her house and burnt her alive. What is heart-breaking in this case is that the father is still fighting for justice. The girl’s father shared that he is fighting because he does not want other daughters of our society to suffer the way his daughter suffered.

Other cases of police brutality were also highlighted in the show. More or less, in all cases, the most common problem was police rejecting to register the complaint. Section 116 (A) in the Indian Penal Code suggests if a police declines to file a FIR, then any Indian citizen can report to the magistrate. The police can get up to 2 years jail term.

A rape victim’s suffering does not end with her experience with police. Her sufferings and trauma continue in hospitals also. Indian doctors are not trained to handle rape cases. Once again, many doctors discourage victims because doctors do not want to get into court cases. Whatever medical report is generated in the hospital is used as evidence by the rape victim to get justice. Many times, doctors are careless about the report. Take this story. A girl was tied, beaten and raped. It was a case of anal rape. However, the report only mentioned that her vagina did not have bruises. The report failed to mention about severe beatings in other parts of her body. “No injuries in vagina” statement made her case weak. Other careless and appalling cases in hospitals were highlighted in the show.

A rape victim’s biggest trauma is when she goes to the court. That is when she comes face-to-face with her culprits. Worse, culprits come to the court well-prepared with private lawyers. A rape victim gets the public prosecutor whom she meets for the first time in the courtroom. Another biggest loophole in our system is that when a girl registers a complaint with the police, the girl does not see what police has written. The FIR and other documents are directly sent to the public prosecutor. So if the girl reports that she was wearing red cloth, somehow if police writes “yellow” instead of red, and if the lawyer asks the color of her cloth, and if she says red, then her case becomes weak. Additionally, the Indian Supreme Court does not allow defense lawyers to ask inappropriate questions to the rape victim. However questions like “who unbuttoned your clothes first?” “How long was his penis?” etc are normal. Once again, the defense lawyers are there to break victim mentally so she does not come back. A rape victim shared her experience, “The defense lawyer asked me to raise my saree the way my rapists did. I saw my rapists giggling.” Another biggest problem in India is the frequent court adjournments, and thus the case gets delayed for years. A social worker working with rape victims shared, “A 13-year old girl was raped. She is 21 year old, and her case is still pending. Every time we get court dates, we have to remind her every single details of the day when she was raped, such as what clothes she wore that day, how she was raped, how she was beaten- everything. She cannot afford to forget anything, or else she might lose the case. In one way, we are not allowing the girl to forget the trauma for years because of this delay in justice.”

Lastly, the one that is the cruelest towards a rape victim is “we as a society”. The show highlighted a very heart-touching story of a father whose 3 year old daughter was raped. When people came to know about it, neighbors and relatives started boycotting them. They started raising questions about the character of a 3-year old girl. The landlord asked them to leave the colony. The father is still fighting alone.

Whenever we hear about rape cases, we always question victim’s motives and character. “What was she doing so late in that area?” “What was she wearing?” “A good-character girl cannot be raped” “Who asked her to go out?”, and thousands of other questions. Police, doctors, lawyers- they are all part of the same society we live in. We, as a society, endorse this notion about women’s pureness and when a woman is raped, she becomes impure in our minds. Thus, we try to find faults in her (not the rapists), and we do not hesitate to question about her character and intention. Have we ever thought why a girl should suffer because of the crime somebody else has committed? Are we not all supporting rapists in some way or the other? No wonder why 96% of rapists in this country get away with their crimes.

I think we should focus on looking at a bigger picture , acknowledging the issue and addressing it, rather than discussing why Aamir did what he did, and what Salman did what he did, and associating that with politics.

In this blog also, we have tried to highlight the legitimate issues, without giving credit to anyone. Obviously since content was borrowed from Satyamev Jayate, we have to mention the show’s name. Tomorrow, even if Rakhi Sawant raises this issue to gain publicity , I think it is worth writing if issues are important. “Who” is raising does not matter, “why” is he/ she raising also does not matter, “what” is being raised- that matters..!!

you are probably waiting for my feedback …Aamir Khan’s show is complete hoax ……though he is good actor and maybe a fine human being as well this show coming on the eve of elections and gaining wide publicity is just a political gimmick of his backers to divert the issues from real ones-corruption, mis-governance, scams, to rape, women empowerment , Dasrath Majhi social development and all the laws that have come to protect women.lot in acts but nothing in ground.. don’t they ring a bell to you kindly refrain from giving him unnecessary credit….by default the audience will be those who are sensitized with these issues….. as women are given more education , people become aware and the younger generation learns about respecting women hopefully crime against women will go down …atleast Salman is ten times better ….he says what he feels even infront of Modi he said he would support Congress ..hopefully the law would catch up with him….others are diplomatic but there real intentions maybe of greater malice